Question

If Aliens, doomsday asteroid, communications from distant worlds etc... were ever discovered, would they be public or concealed?

These things would certainly be public, because they could not be kept secret. SETI, for example, is not a program carried out by the government; it is a largely privately funded international effort with agreed-upon procedures to verify a signal and make the information public. Asteroid surveys are also mostly not done by the government, and in addition to the professional astronomers, there are many thousands of amateurs who could also verify such a discovery. Every near-Earth asteroid discovered is published immediately on the Internet for everyone to see. I know the astronomical community well, and I can assure you they could not keep a secret even if asked to. Unfortunately, people with a paranoid mindset tend to claim that some big government cover-up would take place, and Hollywood movies also sometimes take this approach. But what is good for a movie plot is not necessarily related to reality. As someone who knows both the scientific community and the U.S. Government (NASA), I have little sympathy for uninformed accusations of conspiracy or cover-up.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
January 16, 2009